


A Kiss Like Dying

by Petyrs



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Deathless - Catherynne M. Valente, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, BDSM, Bondage, Consensual, Deathless AU, F/M, Riding Crops, Rope Bondage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-11 15:02:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4440398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petyrs/pseuds/Petyrs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Please take note of the tags! Despite its consensual nature, the content here may not be every reader's cup of tea. As always, feedback after reading is deeply appreciated!</p>
    </blockquote>





	A Kiss Like Dying

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LotusEater](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LotusEater/gifts).



> Please take note of the tags! Despite its consensual nature, the content here may not be every reader's cup of tea. As always, feedback after reading is deeply appreciated!

Immortal, they called him. _Deathless_. To separate oneself from one’s Death required great control, greater than any general, any tsar, any god. Pompous though he might be, never did her lover refer to himself as divine, preferring less direct language, a dancing of tongues and ideas which spun round and round until the explanation left one more confused than the question it sought to answer. Baelish kept no secrets from his _volchitsa_ , his _little_ _wolf_ , none save where he had buried away that small, dark part of him. And it must needs be small, _his Death_ , or else the man swelled up in its absence, other parts swallowing that gap neatly tucked behind the curling ivory cage of ribs. In losing Death the man gained Life, an exchange rather than a cost. She wished to join him one day, bright and strong and fearless, no matter how Baelish prattled on about loss, inevitability, _betrayal_. Such queer obsessions for one who would never know the kiss of a grave, soil battering features once smooth and flushed pink; many told her to lock away Death was not so simple, that she could not follow some neatly drawn list, ticking off steps until she too might tease him with secreted scraps of soul, but the girl would not be swayed.

 

Perhaps if she were deathless his _lessons_ would not have been so imperative. Sansa remembered well the sinusoidal dips and rises between pain and pleasure, every new delight startling before it soothed. They had moved far past such trivialities now, those fumbling weeks and months of pained cries and skittish looks which made both question a midnight absconding’s sagacity. Then her Death had followed like a shadow, a wraith, a haunting soon to _devour_ her. Beside a man free of such fetters vulnerability crept upon the girl — would this bring about her end? _Would this?_ In Baelish it sensed a power insurmountable, a _foe_ ; whenever he appeared it burrowed and curled within her, some sightless vole satisfied that in hiding lay survival. So long, so many days spent fighting wars, so many nights drawing blood in search of what dark pleasures ran within, and _still_ her Death remained. To stay mortal was not, however, to stay _unchanged_ — now the snap of rope like a snake’s tail or bite of the switch, sharp as bee’s sting, signaled a sharing of truths between them. _All save one_.

 

“You _mustn’t_ ask again.” They played this game often, her sometimes suffering from a foolishly loosened tongue, others a sheer desire to hear his chastisement and offer up her own as well. “You know how I _loathe_ repetition.” To live forever meant _inevitable_ repetitions, a thousand renditions of events; sometimes the clothing changed, sometimes the hair, the accents, the language, though beneath it all coursed the same worn story. How many other copper-haired girls had he swept up into a car black as raven’s wings? How many blue eyes wept salted tears at a lash’s first kiss? How often had Baelish said, again and again, _I loathe repetition_? Countless, Sansa knew. And so she begged of him once more: _Where is your Death? Show me your Death. If you love me so, why will you not give to me this final piece of you?_ To ropes and silk scarves the girl submitted easily enough, all struggle afterward a show, an act, enthusiasm measured in bruises and shouts and curses.

 

Beneath her spine lay cool rivulets of silk; later, they would warm its rippling folds in much more _conventional_ ways. Now such fabric eased the burn of rope at ankles and wrists, cushioning scarves long ago done away with when Petyr saw fit to _bind_ her. Though she ought have felt exposed, ashamed, her sex adorned yet unhidden by auburn curls betwixt parted thighs, Sansa instead felt only relief. _Now_ they could be honest with one another, _now_ they could stop hiding behind veneers of courtesy and tolerance. It had been too long since last she watched Petyr loiter beside their bed, shirtsleeves rolled once, twice, his collar unbuttoned, crop tapping absently against his knee. Her husband circled to one side, contemplating her as an artist would blank canvas, pale skin reflecting back in glaucous stare like starlight, shimmering points of possibility lighting up an otherwise desolate sky.

 

“Though it may have been a girl, a _child_ that I brought to my kingdom,” Baelish mused, wrist flicking upward, leather stepping from one rib to another, _slip-catch slip-catch slip-catch_ , “it is no _girl_ that I have wed.” The snake hissed and she felt its bite, crop slicing in parabolic arc to swat her mound. Knee flexed, hips twisting away from the hit, setting ropes to creaking, the wooden joints of shared bed groaning under a fruitless attempt to flee. Often after striking her Petyr’s fingers found her breast, her throat, her slit, tender caresses meant to soothe hurts as readily as any balm. But now his hand caressed the whip, swirled pads running over braided leather, coveting a handle’s weight, admiring the flex of its shaft; inner walls clenched, attempted to emulate twinges, tremors, throbs, all to no avail. Baelish struck her again on the soft expanse of thigh turned towards him. No curls could conceal how a poppy bloomed, bright red, _blood_ red, a crimson stain spreading just beneath the ivory limb.

 

Though Sansa’s flesh lay angry, flushing with accusation, the greater body seemed not at all displeased by such _strident_ attentions. Quickly, her yelp of shock devolved into a _moan_ ; stricken as intimate muscles worked in pantomime of ecstasy, she felt a pulse of _true_ relief. Stomach bowed inward, away from leathern assailant and towards minuscule spasms, bottom working into feather-down as Sansa sought friction, any friction, a means by which to twist this pleasure-pain solely towards the first. Such would not come for quite some time, she knew, transforming pointless quest into her own sort of torture. “A girl could not savor _this_.” _Thwack!_ A hit where abdomen creased, forcing Sansa to straighten, limbs stretched as her bonds went slack. Breath hissed out from behind clenched teeth. “Too unrefined.” Then the crop was circling a coral bud, coaxing sensitive flesh to peak, trailing down to trace below the faint dip of a breast. _So impersonal_. Cool leather brought to mind instead open kisses winding from jaw to throat to chest, a rasping tongue, mouth suckling at one nipple as he would later attend to a different sort of nub between her legs.

 

No draft disturbed them with inquisitive tendrils of air, palace and land and sky oft looking down with curiosity upon their Deathless lord, but still could she smell a faint tinge of her arousal. _Peach’s nectar_ , he called it once, little beard slickened with ambrosial libation, likening her to a thousand thousand gravid offerings of trees and bushes as he drank deep of godly vintage. How strange, the salty and the sweet, black and red, dark and light, two halves forever shifting, forever fitting back together. Would he make her take him tonight? Oh, but Petyr much preferred his wife on her _knees_ for such a task, reins of ruby falling as temptation along his legs, beside his fingers. Wrists turned within their bindings, hands clasping over braided strands, shifting with a renewed urge to find themselves _freed_.  Sansa wished to taste him, swallow him, know again that queer sense of power experienced when forced to _serve_ and given hot, coursing _life_ as a reward.

 

Eyes had fallen shut in the midst of ardent fantasies, concealing how blue would shift to black, to grey, to silver, reflecting back every lewd intention harbored by a willing bride. _Thwack!_ Another kiss, sharper, incisors bared, chastised a stiffened bud. When Sansa looked to him guilt lay plain upon her face. They always traveled together, never in silence; _there were no secrets in this room_. “My love, if only — ” _If only you would share in this final thing_. Petyr raised the crop again but did not bring it down, instead lowering it slowly so that it lay across her mouth, an ebon finger extended to shush.

 

“What do you know of love, _volchitsa_?” he tutted. Tucked in woolen trousers she could see the bulge of his cock, imagined his warmth, how he would lie heavily in one palm, a single, weeping tear smeared across his head. Following paired sapphire, Baelish cupped himself, rubbing through warm winter fabric, groan rumbling free as his hand slipped aside, slipped into pant’s pocket. “You have known only one life; I, many. You have seen my factory, the women working there. How often I have thought to find love and failed. I knew a _thousand_ half-loves, yet none of them full. _None of them you_.” His words filled her, wine wrung from the finest summer grapes, intoxicating in the sting beneath its cloying taste. Even with his love Petyr shamed her: _For mine is greater and better earned. Here I stand more than worthy and you know not why, ever questioning_. Flagellation necessary to their coupling, for how possibly could he have chosen a less inquisitive girl, one freely accepting of what twilight clung all about his being? “You will learn what love is,” he told her. “I teach it to you even now.” The crop slipped away, once again dangling loosely at his side; rather than speak, Sansa nodded, hair pushed out into a flaming corona as her chin bobbed up and down, up and down.

 

“ _Do not use love as an excuse with me_.”

 

Then Baelish was walking towards bed’s foot, whip tossed aside with a clatter on the floor. Fingers worked hastily, nimble tugs and twists amongst knotted cords freeing first one foot, then the other. Grey-green lingered between her legs in perfect mirror of Sansa’s own covetous stare, watchful even as he nudged at an ankle until she pulled them closed. While he made to round the bed they pressed closer still, seeking what Petyr refused to give; at once a warning palm pressed in the hollow just inside her hips, stilling her. Pressure continued, the man leaning as she sank further and further into the mattress until Sansa understood. The single rope which bound left and right wrist alike twisted as she turned, rolling onto her belly. There she ground without pretext or shame into wrinkled coverlet, ribs shaken by relieved moan, brow tilting further amongst their pillows as if she might hide such blatant disobedience.

 

For a time he let her move, circling and writhing atop the bed towards a climax Sansa knew would not wholly satisfy, though she chased it all the same. Heels tapped out this way, then that across parquet floors, Baelish moving with an almost calculated patience whilst his lady serviced herself so meanly. Unseen task complete, he moved to stand just at her waist, observant; when her breath began to catch, hips working furiously, toes dug firmly in for purchase, Petyr brought down the switch. Though he used hardly more force than the crop which came before it fell on her with a great _crack_ , a crimson streak flaring in the crease where Sansa’s bottom met her thighs. Such disruption pulled from her a ragged cry, body tensing until it lay as rigid as the branch that struck it. All vestiges of her release dissipated, scattered powder-fine through nerves and vessels, impotent against the burning mark of birch. Petyr hummed, pleased.

 

_Yes. Yes_ , she thought. _Banish from me all questions, all doubts, remind me what it was to be a girl untouched and unworried by who you are_. He hit her a second time, low along her bottom. More than a sound of pleasure rumbled out of her, a growl, a _snarl_ , something animalistic as she warned him not to press too far, dared him to find that margin. “My _volchitsa_ ,” Baelish crooned, palm running from coccyx to nape in a warm brush. There fingers toyed with auburn wisps, played with a curl turned dark with sweat, raked nails across her scalp. “My _lisichka_.” Touch and speech sufficed to ease Sansa back into the cushion of their bed, shifting to rest her face on one cheek and _watch_. “Mayhaps now I shall call you my _tigryonak_ instead.” Petyr hit her again, across the rounded firmity of her buttocks. Two fingers skated along the edges of a growing fire, tracing out where the switch had fallen. Then a fourth strike, a fifth, a sixth, never hitting the same enflamed flesh, her stripes blooming closer and closer together as he worked. By the seventh she began calling out: _More! More! More!_ Was it after the tenth, or the eleventh, that Baelish halted, panting out his efforts? Sansa had lost count, knowing only he had not split flesh. Ever a contrarian, her husband rarely carried on when begged to do so; only together, at the end, as all collapsed in on itself, did he relent from such mulishness.

 

From him a great heat radiated, beating down on Sansa even from so far above, passions unreleased clawing out beneath his skin. A cacophony seemed to fill their room: clatter of wood, thud of shoes, hiss of metal teeth. Baelish did not trouble himself with undressing, untucking his shirtfront and fishing out hardened length from his trousers. Using astonishing tenderness he parted her legs and knelt between them, careful not to touch where his handiwork had left alternating bands of cream and crimson. Already she was wet for him, had been wet for him, pain as reliable as pleasure between them, the two inseparable from one another in their bed, their lives, their futures. He found her in a single thrust, moans and sighs and gasps commingling, fluttering birds taking wing all about the room. One arm swept beneath her, between her breasts, fingertips pressing up against the hollow of her throat. The other angled upward along Sansa’s back, taking in hand a thick rope of copper hair. Sansa turned to her restraints for leverage, for comfort, steadying herself against their pull as Baelish began to move. His full weight fell upon her hips, woolen slacks scraping at tender flesh along bottom and thighs, yet through such discomfort pleasure coursed, the burden of him forcing her mound back down into feathered cushion.

 

As Petyr thrust, long, languorous slides along her walls, that hidden clutch of nerves his wife so longed to feel attended ground further into their bed. It might instead have been his fingers working there at the apex of her thighs, what pleasurable coiling Sansa lost to a switch’s snap soon settling low in her belly. “ _Petyr_.” An entreaty all but lost to indifferent pillows, though he would feel the fog of breath against his fingers well enough. “Will I have a _howl_ from my little wolf?” Baelish asked, nipping at her ear. Sharp thrusts soon punctuated indulgent windings of his hips; control became an illusion, another mask to wear then cast aside, small tremors coursing down his legs, his arms, along his belly as the man staved off his climax. Sansa could hardly breathe, hair a curtain of stranglevines across her face, his hand pressing harder at her neck, exhausted, reduced to hurt and hope and him. “Call out for me, your dark lover. This spirit in your bed. _Your husband_.” She spoke his name again, _a whisper_ , mighty enough to bring them both crashing down. Fox, tiger, wolf; the shout which echoed through their chamber came from no _animal’s_ throat. Pleasure and pain, _inseparable_. And it pained them both, the _death_ that followed such an act. For what they had created now perished, erupting in a shower of luminescent shards, drawing from them pulse, breath, _life_. Sansa pulled from him the seed she once longed to taste and repaid him with her approving cries; each emptied themselves into the other until they were full again, as it was always meant to be.

 

Afterwards, Petyr bathed her. Oils and potions swirled across the water’s surface, rainbow prisms reflecting in the light of low-burning candles. No rag ran as softly across her skin as did his hands, washing sweat and seed from her until Sansa gleamed. Beside the basin he tended every mark, lotions and balms all lovingly smoothed over streaks of crimson, streaks of cobalt, streaks of aubergine. Her pains reduced to mere memories, ghosts lingering just over ivory skin, she let Baelish envelop her in a towel’s expanse, pat dry her hair, carry her to a bed which reeked of sin. Questions of his Death, where to find it, and how to pull free her own remained; neither ever truly believed their lovemaking would silence her, not forever, not in all things, though in such a way they might speak more truthfully than with words alone. Beside her Petyr lay, bundling his wife against him; gone were the strict lines above his brow, as was the stubborn set to her mouth. “It is the most beautiful part of you, my love,” the Deathless Man whispered against her crown. Sansa burrowed closer. “Your Death. I would never see you parted.”

 

She fell asleep with the press of his lips against her mouth, and the taste of ash upon her tongue.


End file.
